TBILISI, Georgia — Georgia's Foreign Ministry says Russian-backed separatists from the province of Abkhazia have seized 13 villages in Georgia and a power plant.
A ministry statement says Russian army units and separatist militants shifted the border of breakaway Abkhazia toward the Inguri River. It says they set up temporary administration in 13 villages and put the Inguri hydropower plant under separatist control.
"There are cases of physical abuse and looting," it said.
The ministry said Russian military aircraft had also dropped bombs to set fire to large areas of Georgian forest.
The claim could not immediately be independently confirmed. Abkhaz officials could not immediately be reached for comment on the late-night report.
Most of the villages and plant are in a buffer zone established by a 1994 U.N cease-fire resolution that ended a war over the province and left it with de facto independence.
It appeared that the separatists were bolstering their control over the area after Russian-backed Abkhazian fighters forced Georgians out of their last stronghold in the province earlier this week.
The renewed military action in Abkhazia came alongside fighting in another breakaway province in Georgia, South Ossetia, that has pit Russian and U.S.-backed Georgian forces against each other since Aug. 7 and prompted world diplomatic efforts to end the violence.
The buffer zone runs between Abkhazia's Gali region and Georgia's Zugdidi region, including a narrow, mountainous strip between Abkhazian territory and the Inguri River.
Abkhazian forces moved into the buffer zone last weekend in what the province's president said was a bid to “enforce order” and eliminate the Georgian militants who had mounted attacks on Abkhazian police and security forces from there.
Sergei Bagapsh acknowledged the Abkhazian move into the buffer zone would violate the peace agreement that ended the 1992-1993 war, but claimed that Georgia was the first to violate the truce.
